This disclosure relates generally to presenting content to users of a social networking system, and more specifically selecting content for a social networking system user based at least in part on an accuracy of an age asserted by a user of the social networking system user.
A social networking system allows its users to connect to and to communicate with other users. Users may create profiles on a social networking system that are tied to their identities and include information about the users, such as interests and demographic information. The users may be individuals or entities such as corporations or charities. Because of the increasing popularity of social networking systems and the significant amount of user-specific information maintained by social networking systems, a social networking system allows users to easily communicate information about themselves to other users and share content with other users.
Many social networking systems maintain characteristics associated with their users and select content for presentation to various users based on the characteristics associated with the users. Various characteristics associated with a user may be asserted by the user to a social networking system. For example, a user asserts an age to the social networking system, which stores the age in association with the user. However, users may fail to assert certain characteristics to a social networking system or may assert inaccurate characteristics to the social networking system. For example, a user asserts an age to the social networking system different than the user's actual age. Inaccuracies in characteristics associated with users by the social networking system impair selection of content for the users by the social networking system. For example, inaccurate characteristics associated with a user cause the social networking system to erroneously identify content for presentation to the user or to erroneously exclude content from being evaluated for presentation to the user.